Here's What Was Actually in Those Bedpans During Sam's Gross Game of Thrones Montage

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season premiere of Game of Thrones.

Samwell Tarly was full of hope when entered the Citadel to train to become a maester on the last season of Game of Thrones. At last, he found a job that fit his skills and passions. But when we next saw him, in the first episode of Season Seven, we find that he has to pay his dues first—and it's not pretty.

Sam's job mostly consists of stacking books, serving soup, and cleaning bedpans, as we see in this extremely gross montage. There's not much studying to be done just yet.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

John Bradley, the actor who plays Sam, told Vulture he had to film that montage while the rest of the cast was off at the Emmys. "They were on the red carpet in L.A. while I was on my own in Belfast, dry-heaving and pretending to scrape shit out of the bedpan," he said. "The balance is a little bit off here."

No, there wasn't actual feces in those bedpans, but the substitute seemed nearly as awful. "Well, if you want to re-create human feces onscreen, the best thing to do is to use soaking-wet fruitcake and mold it into the shape of turds," Bradley said. "When you get to five in the afternoon and you've been shooting all day, and the wet fruitcake has been in the water and under the hot lights all day, it starts to become only slightly less unpleasant than the real thing."

But now that Sam has stolen books from the restricted section of the library that have key information on dragonglass, there's a good chance Bradley won't have to film with fruitcake again any time soon.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.